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ArtyFakts: What Rough Beast

This is St Columba’s Well, who is credited with bringing Christianity to the pagan inhabitants of Kintyre in the 6th Century CE. I think Yeats’rough beast is far more accurately reflected in the history of the Christian church than any future epoch of imagined godlessness. Perhaps also in the shape of this well, which strikes me as sinister, a kind of medieval wyrm emerging from the hillside in search of victims.